Battery storage startup Antora Energy raised $550 million to expand production of its thermal batteries, which can help heavy industry and data centers lower costs and run on renewable energy.
The Series C funding, co-led earlier this month by Eclipse and G2 Venture Partners, will allow Antora to build a second factory to produce its modular batteries for pairing with renewables or grid power. Participating investors included Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures as well as BlackRock Inc. and Temasek Holdings Pte.'s joint venture Decarbonization Partners.
Demand for batteries has surged as renewable energy makes up a growing share of electricity generation. The technology allows operators to buy and store cheap energy when renewable output is abundant and demand is low, then discharge it when the sun sets, winds slow or power prices rise. Antora said its batteries can discharge firm energy around-the-clock.
“There are some customers that care about the environmental attributes, but it's our firm belief that you have to be competitive on cost, otherwise none of the rest of it matters,” said Andrew Ponec, Antora's chief executive officer and co-founder, in an interview.
Thermal batteries' ability to stash heat at extremely high temperatures – Antora's batteries operate at 2,400C (4,352F) – make them especially well-suited for heavy industrial facilities such as steel or cement plants that have proven difficult to wean from fossil fuels because many of their processes require scorching temperatures.
Antora is also developing thermophotovoltaic technology, similar to the approach used in solar panels, to convert heat into electricity. In addition, Ponec said the company is pursuing projects beyond industrial applications, including data centers, but declined to name specific customers.
As they struggle with lengthy grid connection queues, some data centers have turned to bringing in their own power generation and storage. The heat from thermal batteries can be used to produce steam which can then generate electricity.
“The data center opportunity or other commercial enterprise electricity applications, that second act, that's what really got us excited to underwrite the investment,” said Joe Fath, a partner at Eclipse.
Thermal batteries are less efficient than lithium-ion batteries at converting stored energy into electricity. But they are built with less expensive materials and can store energy for days.
“Thermal energy storage could be a cheaper way to store energy over those daily or weekly time scales because the material cost is so cheap,” said Dharik Mallapragada, an energy engineer at New York University.
Antora's first commercial project launched this spring: a wind-powered battery project for biofuel-maker Poet LLC in South Dakota. The site is the largest thermal energy storage facility in the world, accounting for 89% of estimated global capacity, according to Kyle Disselkoen, an analyst at BloombergNEF.
The project allows Antora to purchase curtailed wind power at a discounted rate, which it stores and sells to Poet, which can then access federal tax credits designed to promote clean fuel production.
“Stacking those multiple sources of revenue is key to making projects bankable,” Disselkoen said.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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